Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2008

from, which was a pretty much all-black high school. My mother told me that if I wanted to prepare myself for the world, I needed to go to a university that was world-like, that had people of different nationalities and different sexual orientations, so I would be able to appreciate the differences in people.”

He called his mother almost every day, and he used every resource he could find to adjust to campus life.

“Who didn’t I turn to is the question,” he said. “I turned to Archie Ervin [’ 99 PhD], who was director of minority student recruitment; to the associate director of the Carolina Union; to the administrative manager of the Stone Center. As a freshman, I had a mentor adviser, Rachel Hemphill. She and other faculty and staff led me to finding tutors, people who would help prepare me academically. It was a lot of work, but I’m glad I did it.”

He also got involved — very involved. He was chosen for North Carolina Fellows, a UNC-based leadership development program, and he joined the Black Student Movement, a gospel choir and the-

ater groups. He mentored high school students through a Stone Center program, became an R.A. and worked with the Carolina Performing Arts series.

When he went home for breaks, the disconnect between his two worlds became apparent again. “The perception was that I thought I was better than those around me because I decided to go to Carolina. So I was an outsider in certain situations. In other situations, I was the person who got out. When I went home, teachers would call and say, ‘Come talk to this student.’”

Success is contagious

Knowing where a student went to high school and whether his or her parents went to college can’t tell you who’s ready for Carolina, says Admissions Director Steve Farmer. When he evaluates first-generation applicants, he looks for signals that they are hungry to learn.

“Maybe there’s a teacher in the high school, a coach, a pastor, who has given the student an opportunity,” he said. “If the student responds to those opportunities, the student has a good chance here.”

Outreach programs such as the Scholars’ Latino Initiative, the Carolina College Advising Corps and the Carolina Covenant can have an enormous effect on the college trajectory of North Carolina’s students, he said. “SLI has had a huge impact on Jordan-Matthews, and I hope the advising corps will have a similar effect on other schools and their communities.

“This job from one point of view is to identify, recruit and enroll students who will make Carolina a better place than it is right now. But we should do more, we must do more, and the ‘more’ right now in North Carolina is trying to help kids find their way to college.”

When first-generation students succeed in college, the impact of their experience can spread to their families and to the communities around them.

When Marcus Harvey graduated from Carolina, about 20 people from his hometown came to the ceremony — his mother and brothers, his cousins, uncles and high school teachers.